My DIY NAS Project

[handruin]

The Dell Perc 6i can run 16 drives according to Dell. There are connections for 8 drives on the card. The only way I know of going beyond that is to get some kind of HP SAS expander solution. Since the Perc 6i only cost me $150/each it was much simpler and possibly cheaper for me to buy two.

The advantage of having two beyond the aforementioned info is performance. There is more bandwidth and cache available when I split up between two arrays. I also did not want one enormous array, so mine is going to be split 8 and 8.

Right now I'm up to 8x 1.5TB drives and will moving to the next array set shortly. I should update some photos and info to this thread. A few things have changed since I wrote this thread.

 

[jvic]

Dual Active

I guess there is a way to setup the 2 Dell Perc into some "dual active" failover mode,

In this case, both Dell Perc 6 would connect to one backplan with redundant paths I think.

I am trying to figure this out but it is confusing me.

So, on yours, they are 2 totally separate arrays. The 2 dell percs don't know about each other?

Does anyone know how you would join the two Perc 6 together as Active-Active?

 

[handruin]

Yep, I'll have two separate Perc 6i controllers that won't know about each other with two separate arrays. I wasn't looking for a redundant controller or fail over capability.

Where did you find that the Perc controllers can work in a dual active mode? Was this some kind of specialize back plane?

 

[jvic]

Dual Controller Mode

If you do some searches on Dell Perc HA (high availability) setups it seems possible.

For example, on the dell MD 3220 page it says this:

Single or dual active/active controller array
Supports up to eight non HA servers or four HA servers (dual controller model)
Rack-mounted enclosure consuming only two units (2U) of rack space
Power and cooling savings with 6 cm (2.5") drives, high-efficiency power supplies and variable-speed fans
Specifications - Model




anyone have any idea how this is setup?

I am guessing you have two controllers, connected to one backplane.

 

[jvic]

Integrated into the Enclosure

Maybe this dual controller stuff has been moved and only offered in the Storage Array. the server then probably uses iScsi, FC, or SAS to connect to the storage array and the array handles the RAID functions internally.

Anyone have more insight on this?

I could have sworn I had a server with dual perc cards that worked together, like an HA sql server.